Writing: How To Do a Short Story Collection

 The following comes from BOOKFORUM TALKS WITH CARA BLUE ADAMS ABOUT HER STORY COLLECTION YOU NEVER GET IT BACK:

I’m curious what the seed of this book was. Did you begin with Kate’s character and go from there?

When I finally sat down to put a book together, I started to think about what would hold these stories together. Some of my first readers—who are also writers themselves—thought the stories didn’t need to be explicitly linked and that my voice and sensibility would be enough to unite them. While I love that kind of collection, I did want a stronger center. There’s so much variety in the way the stories are written and in where they take place: Vermont, Boston, Maine, Virginia, Arizona, and elsewhere in the Southwest and South. That’s when Kate Bishop started to present herself. And of course—I should have known this—the stories really changed once I decided they were about the same character and put them together.

What I did was write a few stories before deciding they could all be connected. I did it but I cannot recommend my method. I do recommend the advice given above - plan.

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12/22/21